Professor of classical archaeology and museum director;
established modern methods of ancient Greek vase analysis. Furtwängler's father
was a classical scholar and schoolmaster. From 1870 onward, Furtwängler studied at Leipzig,
under Johannes Overbeck and Freiburg where he received his
undergraduate degree. His dissertation, Eros in der Vasenmalerei, was
written in 1874, (published 1876) in Munich under Heinrich "Enrico" von Brunn.
Furtwängler would later write a memoir of von Brunn. The academic years 1876-1877
and 1877-1878 he worked under a stipend at the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (DAI),
in several Mediterranean countries. In 1878 he participated in the Olympia excavation site of Heinrich Schliemann in Greece. He completed his habilitation
the following year under Reinhard Kekulé in Bonn. In 1879 he published
together with his colleague Georg Loeschcke, Mykenische Thongefäβe.
This groundbreaking study established the difference between Mycenaean and
Geometric pottery. Furtwängler achieved appointments in 1880 both as assistant
director at the Königliche Museen zu Berlin and as a privatdozent at the
University in Berlin. In later years Furtwängler concluded he had
dedicated his best years to the museum. His book on the Sabouroff collection
(1883-1887) demonstrated his mastery on classical terracottas. He married in 1885 to Adelheid Wendt.
The same year, his two-volume Beschreibung der Vasensammlung im Antiquarium
(Writings on Vase Paining in Antiquity) appeared, a book describing over four thousand objects in a manner still
emulated today. Meisterwerke der griechischen Plastik
(Masterworks of Greek Sculpture) appearing in 1893, served to initiate his method to a larger audience
than his earlier works and impress scholars. In
1894 he left Berlin to succeed his mentor, von Brunn, as professor of classical
archaeology in Munich, adding to his duties the Director of the Glyptothek
Museum. The English translation to Meisterwerke, Masterpieces of Greek
Sculpture, translated by Eugenie Strong, appeared in 1895. These two
editions formed what Johannes Sieveking called "the Book of Books," the
"Bible of archaeologists." Furtwängler issued a study on Greek gems and their inscriptions in 1900,
Die Antiken Gemmen, demonstrating again his breadth of classical knowledge.
In the same year, he renewed the excavations at the temple of Aphaia in Aigina. Furtwängler
and Karl W. Reichhold began issuing a corpus of Greek vases,
Griechische Vasenmalerei in 1904, issued in six "Lieferungen." He published
his research on Aphaia in Aigina in a monograph of 1906. Furtwängler embarked on
writing a history of ancient art the following year, but contracted a case of
dysentery in Aigina and died at age 54, cutting
short a brilliant career. His
students formed the most eminent of the next generation of classical art
historians and archaeologists. These included, in addition to Sieveking, Ludwig Curtius, Oskar Waldhauer (1883-1935), Georg Lippold, Eduard Schmidt, Anton Hekler and initially Ernst Buschor. His research
significantly influenced many major scholars,
most notable among them J. D. Beazley, and the classicists Carl Blegen (1887-1971) and
A. J. B. Wace (1879-1957). The eminent orchestra conductor, Wilhelm Furtwängler
(1886-1954), was his son. After his death, Friedrich Hauser assumed editorship
of the project. Buschor completed volume three of Furtwängler's
Griechische Vasenmalerei in 1932. Furtwängler is buried in Athens.

Furtwängler’s accomplishment cannot be overstated. He developed a pioneering method for prehistorical stylistic
categorization of small artworks, principally pottery sherds. At the time,
pottery fragments were thought to be of little importance by archaeologists.
Furtwängler demonstrated that documenting the specific strata where vases were discovered
could establish both the dating of pottery as well as the
chronology of the cites. His belief in the importance of sherds also
led him to assemble many many, theorizing the artists and schools of Greek vase
painting. It was a technique he learned from his mentor, von Brunn, who had developed a similar method for Greek sculpture. (Furtwängler, like most of his
contemporaries, still largely ignored the value of unpainted pottery). Furtwängler and Reichhold's Griechische Vasenmalerei raised the standard for accurate drawings of vase paintings to an exceptional level. His
volume on gems, Die Antiken Gemmen of 1900, remained his most influential
work of his lifetime. featured exceptionally accurate drawings of vase
paintings. Furtwängler's attribution of Roman copies of Greek sculpture to
artists was also influential in augmenting interest in style and artistic
personalities of classical art. Following in the tracks of
Winckelmann, he conceived of a history of ancient art built upon an aesthetic appreciation of
"masterpieces" of ancient art that served as "records of Western
art-historical development" (Marchand). Furtwängler's work on attributing Roman copies of Greek sculpture to artists spurred an interest in the study of style and artistic personalities in classical art (Rouet). He was perhaps the last classicist
to fulfill the Totalitätsideal of Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker, the goal that
a classical historian could master all aspects of the studies he pursued. Together with Welcker and Brunn, Furtwängler was the most important and influential German archaeologist of the nineteenth century (Lullies); John Boardman in 2001 termed Furtwängler
"probably the greatest classical archaeologist of all time." LS